hadriel_logs | There's a bad moon on the rise.

Entry tags:

chris,
gren

There's a bad moon on the rise.

Who: Bad Idea Monster (

murderpotato) and Horror Game Nerd (

thechoiceisyours)
What: Gren has an idea. It's a bad idea.
Where: The coffee cart near Delight's temple
When: sometime post-Bad End event
Warnings: contains Gren's potty mouth

Once upon a time, a monster had an idea.

It's not a great idea, exactly, and it involves a lot of ifs and a lot of maybes, but Gren's taken bigger risks before... probably. He's done a lot of stupid shit in his life, anyway, so what's one more thing added onto the pile? If anyone's going to be putting themselves in danger for the common good or whatever, it might as well be the hard-to-kill monster man.

God, he hates trying to do the right fucking thing. It always sucks.

But at least there's the coffee cart and its coffee that's of the appropriate consistency. Gren likes being able to drink his coffee, that's how normal people take it and even if Gren is about as far from a normal person as you can get, he still likes his coffee, y'know, liquid.

And this kid said that he could make it Irish. Gren drinks all of his coffee Irish, because he's a goddamn alcoholic.

"I hear you can make some coffee that ain't shit."

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~~His taste in men is apparently Actual Hyperion Fuckboy Rhys and Wade 'Burn Victim Ryan Reynolds' Wilson, so probably not.~~

"Okay, fuckin' fine," he says. "Irish coffee, hold the fuckin' cream."

Even if he wasn't just an alcoholic, he's also lactose intolerant. No one wants to see what'll happen to his guts after drinking a cup full of whiskey and cream.

He listens to the little explanation while Chris sets up the espresso machine-- did this kid get a degree in exposition or something? He's almost surprised that Delight continued to give anything to anybody after the bar fiasco, but hey, maybe she's the least shitty out of all the gods here. At least she keeps them stocked with the mind-altering substance of their choice.

"At least we're gettin' something out of these assholes that won't bite us in the ass."

Unless the gods can figure out some way to terrorize them that involves coffee. Hey, he wouldn't put it past them.

"And once you're done with that, you know someplace we ain't gonna be overheard?"

They have important business to talk about.

~~Alas, no.~~

Chris grins good-naturedly at the surly correction to the order and hey, no degree in exposition, that's just natural talent. Pure natural talent.

He nods in agreement at the comment about getting something good from the gods, but mostly focuses on making the coffee and on Gren's next question.

"Probably like... By the river, or by the outskirts of the city." The river's closer, but more likely to have someone around, though they'd see them if so. The outskirts of the city are usually totally deserted, but a longer walk.

And give him another minute or two here and he'll pass Gren a mug of Irish coffee, hold the cream, before setting up more espresso to brew for himself.

Gren knows the areas around the river pretty well; it's his stalking grounds, mostly, because whenever he wants to get away from people, he heads down there. It's good to get out of his glamour sometimes and go back into the water, kind of like how people like to take their pants off after a long day of work and futz around the house. Only, y'know, his is bigger and uglier.

He'd be able to hear anybody hanging around that they couldn't just see, anyway. The outskirts would technically be less likely to have anyone there, but also kind of more suspicious for two people to be walking there, too.

"River's fine."

Gren takes the mug when it's served up hot, and, to be quite honest, he would have even drank shitty coffee. He never had enough cash back in New York to afford the good stuff, so he just subsisted on either the shit they sell at gas stations and newstands or the cheap instant powder. But this is, like, legit, it's the sort of real coffee that people pay four bucks a cup to get at those nice shops. He takes a sip and it doesn't take like bitter death.

"...Yeah okay, this is pretty fuckin' decent."

Chris pretends to be interested in making his own drink rather than seeing if Gren approves of the coffee, but he doesn't exactly have to be looking to hear the response; he laughs, grinning a little as he stirs sugar into his coffee.

"Thanks; I strive for 'decent.'" He's joking, obviously, and is genuinely pleased by the reaction. "But yeah, okay, river's good with me; want to go now? My coffee's done too and the cart'll be fine without me for a bit."

"Yeah, might as well take a walk."

They've got coffee and some sort of weird robot espionage to talk about. It's almost like a James Bond flick, if James Bond was a weird 80s motherfucker and there were robots for some reason. Sci-fi James Bond? Something like that.

Either way, it's important shit that Gren doesn't want to have overheard. So better close up shop, teenage Q, because you've got to plan out a deeply inadvisable plan with the world's least subtle monster man. Maybe that'll work in his favor? No one expects Gren to be subtle or capable of subtlety, so maybe everyone will think that he's the least likely candidate for a double-agent gig.

He will totally accept being Q, as well as foraying into the sci-fi genre.

Closing up shop basically consists of turning off the espresso machine so it doesn't accidentally burn anyone and standing up a "Back in a few, feel free to serve yourself!" sign he'd made, and he's ready to go.

"So, uh, it's Gren, right?" Chris is pretty sure he knows Gren's name from the network, but he figures he might as well make sure as they start in the direction of the river.

Okay, now they're walking. Just two guys, going for a walk with their coffee, nothing weird to see here. They totally know each other. This is totally not suspicious.

"Yeah, Gren's fine."

It's what everybody calls him, anyway. Besides, this kid's a teenager, if he goes around calling himself Grendel, Ruiner of Mead-Halls and Wrecker of Kings, the whole pretend you aren't a big scary monster masquerade will go right out the window.

"So, kid, you say you're good with computers and shit, right?"

Yeah, that would definitely kill the illusion, although Chris wouldn't be too bothered by the whole thing overall. He might make up additional titles though, so if Gren doesn't want to be given a lot of really ridiculous monikers then it's best to keep the whole thing under wraps.

"Yeah, computers are my thing." Chris confirms, nodding and sipping at his coffee. "Both back home and here. Though I'm um, less like... Well-versed in the physical engineering side of them, and more on the programming, though I do know the basics on the hardware."

But he's not an engineer or a physicist or whatever else, just as skilled as anyone else who works with computers a lot ends up being. Still, he's adept at coding, and even if he might not have been an expert at home he's probably as close as you can get here.

Plus, what teenager hasn't been forced to read Beowulf in high school? Gren's honestly almost surprised that no one's asked him about his name yet. 'Gren' isn't exactly much of a name change, but maybe it's just enough to keep people from getting suspicious.

"I don't think we're gonna need you to build too fuckin' much."

They've got phones and computers and shit already, they don't need him to start building some hardware. What he'd need is, like, to learn the Null's computer language and all of that software kind of shit.

"So what are you gonna need?"

Chris... Probably didn't read it, let's be real here; he was the jerk in high school who spent all their time partying and somehow still got good grades entirely through winging his assignments.

"I need to know what sort of operating system the Null run on. I mean, I dunno how familiar you are with coding, but there are lots of different kind of languages for programming just like there are with speaking; if I don't have the right one, any program I write'll be just as useless as yelling at someone in a language they don't understand."

Which is, obviously, not very effective, and even that has the advantage of getting some information through tone alone.

"Okay."

He remembers the things that Rhys told him about programming, which was, undoubtedly, simplistic at best. Gren's from the mid-80s, programming wasn't exactly a common-knowledge thing back then, nor was it nearly as advanced as what they're dealing with here. He knows some of the lingo and the basic concepts, but beyond that and he's in the dark.

"So you want programs and shit they've written, or something that's got their system already on it if I can get it."

Neither will probably be easy, but he might be able to make it work. He has ideas, anyway.

"Wonder if it's anything like Hope's shit? It took a while for Rhys to figure all of that out."

"Right, yeah. Either of those things would be great, but the latter's probably the best."

He nods at the last suggestion. "I was uh, thinking that. I mean, the gods don't like, normally use technology much, right? The insides of all the appliances are totally not logically put together, so it's kind of weird that the phones would have a whole programming system to them. I um, learned a lot of what I know from talking to Rhys and looking through the stuff he'd done, but yeah, it's totally different from what I'm used to and I can't see why the gods would've made it that way unless maybe they had a reference point for it."

Which, logically, might've been the Null, especially if they'd coexisted just fine for some time before everything went south.

"I'm uh, planning to ask Hope about it either way, though. He controls the network and all that, so he should know." With any luck.

"It'd make our lives fuckin' easier."

Less work to be done if they both used the same OS. Then Chris here wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel trying to figure out how the Null OS works, or at least will have a better starting point than square one.

"These assholes don't seem real forthcomin' with much of anything, though. Gettin' much outta them is gonna be... tricky."

Tricky's a kind word for it. It's going to be a bitch, that's what it's going to be.

"I guess if they're gonna believe anybody's out to kill the gods around here, it'll be me, though. Far as I know, I'm the only one who's tried to fuckin' fight 'em."

Granted, he only fought Rage and she kicked his ass, but still.

Chris grins a little at the first comments, maybe looking a little smug and hiding it far too late behind his coffee. "I dunno, I don't seem to have a whole lot of trouble getting info out of them."

And okay, Chris is totally aware that's because he just knows the gods better than most people after all this time, but whatever. Although he's definitely a little intrigued by Gren's last remark; he didn't know about this.

"Oh yeah? Which one, why, and how did that go?"

Tell him the deets.

He meant the Null, not the gods, but you try getting a straight answer out of Sorrow and get back to him. It's like pulling teeth, except that you can get teeth out with the proper application of force.

"Rage, she's a fuckin' bitch, and it's on the network."

To answer all those questions in one go. Once upon a time, a certain murderpotato had gotten inadvisably drunk in Delight's bar (back when that had still been a thing), and had basically yelled 'come at me bro' to the gods. Rage hadn't passed it up, because, well. Rage. Really, all he was probably doing at that point was feeding her, but he'd been egged on by alcohol and a series of bets.

"I lasted longer than anybody expected. But fightin' those assholes head-on ain't exactly the best way to do it."

He knows, he woke up the next day with the bruises to prove it.

Oh, well, that makes sense. But just moving right along--

Chris gives Gren a dubious look for a moment, not immediately sure he's being serious except for the fact that he... Sounds serious. And who would make up fighting with the gods and losing, and then say it's on the network as proof?

So he believes him, just... Wow. "Yeah, uh, I know someone here who tried fighting them with like... Super magic, and it didn't work out that great for them either."

So yes. Two for two losses on fighting the gods indicates it's probably not a great idea.

"I'm pretty fuckin' inclined to believe the Null when they say they got shit that can take these assholes down for keeps."

On one hand, he kind of likes the idea. He's not a fan of the gods or how they do things around here, and knocking them down a couple of pegs wouldn't be bad in his books. But the Null aren't the devils they know, and he can't see any good reason why they wouldn't just kill everybody once the gods are gone. They did it with the people who were here before them, after all.]

"Sorrow told me one time that he didn't want us to know how they got killed the first time around, because it'd give us ideas. So it can't be somethin' that fuckin' complicated, super-magic or fuckin' whatever, because he thought we'd be able to figure it out ourselves."

It's also clearly not as simple as 'punch the fuckers to death', because that's the angle that Gren tried. Well, it was a shot, right?

"I guess it won't fuckin' matter if we can shut 'em all down before they do much damage."

"Yeah. I mean, they've done it once before."

And he's not surprised by that answer from Sorrow, either; the gods have been pretty cagey until recently, and Sorrow especially Chris doesn't expect to get a whole lot out of if it's anything personal to the gods. And he really can't blame him; Chris doesn't doubt that people here would take advantage of anything that can to kill the gods, no matter how stupid it might be.

"But yeah. Stopping the Null that way would be like... It'd save everyone a whole lot of trouble and danger and whatever. It's definitely worth a shot, even if it's uh... Kind of a risk itself. You're okay with um, taking that risk?"

Since Chris definitely can't do the double-agent part of this himself, since he's made it no secret that he's on the gods' side on this.

Stupid to kill the gods, yeah-- but Gren wouldn't mind knowing what could hurt them, because it would at least be an equalizer. It's harder to take advantage of them if the gods know that they can bite back.

But the Null are a higher priority right now.

"Wouldn't fuckin' be here if I wasn't," he replies. Which is true, because he wouldn't walk all the way out here if he didn't mean what he said.

"Besides, like I said, I got a history of pickin' fights with gods. I should be a pretty easy sell to the Null."

Plus, he's... got people that he doesn't want to see hurt around here. One person in particular, mostly, but he'd be hard pressed to admit that delicate feels shit.

Delicate feels are the worst, man.

"Okay. Well um, I'm totally on board on my end, and I can also let the gods know not to like... Focus on you for the investigation thing." So he'll be able to concentrate entirely on fooling the Null, rather than also needing to worry about suspicion from the gods.

Delicate feels are the absolute worst, he hates them.

"Yeah, good," he says. "I don't want to deal with 'em any more than I gotta. Just because I ain't on board with handin' our asses over to the fuckin' robot overlords don't mean that I'm buddies with the first set of assholes."

Really, he's only on the gods' side right now because the Null look even less trustworthy than them.

"Fair enough." Chris is... Pretty much friends with the gods, himself, but he gets why other people aren't and really can't blame them.

"So uh, we've got a plan? Let me know whatever you find out, and if I can like, help in any way with that too. And then I'll see what I can do to go all super hacker on the Null."

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There's a bad moon on the rise.

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